NSF's Upper Atmospheric Facilities (UAF) Program was created in 1983 to
oversee the scientific operation of large radars used to probe the upper
atmosphere and ionosphere. The UAF program, initially established to
support four incoherent scatter radars, has evolved over the last 25
years. In the 1990s, the UAF program began support for the U. S.
contribution to the international SuperDARN program. In January 2007,
the NSF-funded solid-state, phased-array incoherent scatter radar at
Poker Flat, Alaska, began routine operations. A similar radar is under
construction at Resolute Bay in the Canadian Arctic and will begin
operations early in 2009.

A review of the UAF program was conducted in 2004 by an external panel
chaired by Susan Avery. The panel recommended that the UAF program
undertake an integrated science planning exercise to ensure the
community is well served by these large facilities. The integrated
planning activities that have taken place over the last several years
has produced a document titled "The National Science Foundation's Upper
Atmospheric Facilities: Integrating Management, Operations, and
Science". This report highlights scientific accomplishments enabled by
the facilities and presents a set of strategies to guide scientific and
technical decision making and planning. It also paves the way for new
management and operations models for the facilities based on an
integrated approach. The report is dedicated to Dr. William Gordon, who
first conceived of the incoherent scatter radar technique a little over
50 years ago.

The report is available on the CEDAR web site (http://cedarweb.hao.ucar.edu,
click on 'Community', 'CEDAR Community Documents', under NSF reports. Hard
copies will be available at the next CEDAR Workshop in June 2009. Please
address comments on the document to Bob Robinson (rmrobins@nsf.gov).

A focused IRI workshop will be held the Monday-Wednesday (May 4-6,
2009) following the Space Weather Week in Boulder. It will take
place at the Space Physics and Atmospheric Research Center of the US
Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, just a short car ride from
Boulder. The goal of this special IRI Task Force Activity is to
explore the possibilities of expanding the capabilities of the
International Reference Ionosphere (IRI). Currently, the focus of IRI
is to produce the best "climatological" description of the ionosphere
at any time and place. IRI climatology includes estimates of
uncertainty, that covers variability or the expected range for a
particular day, but is unable to characterize whether a particular
day is likely to be higher or lower than climatology at a given
location. The workshop will explore two areas: 1. the possibility of
producing the best estimate of the ionosphere in real-time, and 2. to
produce the best estimate of the ionospheric state at anytime in the
past. The latter is similar to the "re-analysis" done for
tropospheric weather. Both will require ingest of observations, and
the application of data assimilation techniques. The goal of the
workshop is to explore ways to add these new capabilities, but
maintain the basic philosophy of IRI to be based on observations, and
not a physical model.

Please pre-register in order to help us with the planning of the
logistics of the conference

This conference will be the seventh in a series of
meetings on meteoroids and related topics, which have been held
approximately every three years since 1993. In 2007 the meeting was
organized by the Institut db �Estudis Espacials de Catalunya (IEEC)
and the Institut de CiC(ncies de lb �Espai (CSIC) and was held in
CosmoCaixa, the science museum of the Obra Social FundaciC3 La Caixa
in Barcelona, Spain. The topics covered during that meeting included
the origin, nature, evolution and dynamics of solar system minor
bodies, with special emphasis on the study of micrometer- to meter-
sized fragments of comets and asteroids.

The 2010 meeting programme is expected to have sessions which cover
the following areas

Both, invited and contributed talks, will be included in
the program. The program schedule will encourage informal
interchange between the different research communities. Deadlines
for registration and abstract submission for contributed talks and
posters will be announced in the Fall of 2009.